December 31st, 2010

Projeto Ficha Limpa as been approved and implemented during the latest Brazilian election. It was supposed to keep corrupt politicians from candidacy. Not surprisingly, corrupt politicians found their ways around it via legal loopholes and special court rulings, and notorious corrupt people, like Mr Paulo Maluf, the ex-mayor of Sao Paulo who’s wanted worldwide by the Interpol, got elected. Paulo Maluf is wanted for international corporate and finacial fraud. The only location in the space-time continuum that Mr Maluf can occupy without worrying about being arrested is Brazil- where he not only gets away with it, but gets elected for congress. As TV anchor Marcelo Tas said, “If there was a nuclear Armageddon only the roaches and Paulo Maluf would survive.” Also, corruption seems to be a character that runs in the Maluf family, since his son is also wanted by the Interpol for the same reasons. That’s Brazil, the country where bandits take over the power democratically by brainless voters and special court rulings.

Before leaving office, President Lula decided against the extradiction of Cesare Battisti, an Italian leftist militant wanted for the murder of at least four people and several other acts deemed terrorism by the Italian government. The story of Battisti is long, polemic and filled with right wing and left wing biases. It’s hard to tell if he’s guilty or just politically persecuted. But that’s not really the matter. Asking ourselves that is asking ourselves the wrong question. Judging Battisti is not our business. That is up for the Italian justice to decide. It’s not up to any other government or people to judge him. By deciding against Battisti’s extradiction President Lula only reinforced Brazil’s reputation for sheltering criminals, corruption and injustice. Acts like that make Brazil look unreliable and compromise eventual diplomatic agreements with other nations. For a person so popular Lula could have finished his mandate better than that.

President Lula deffends Julian Assange: “There is no half freedom of speech.”

As if re-electing old corrupts was not bad enough, there’s the celebration of ignorance: an illiterate clown named Tiririca managed to get a seat in the Brazilian congress after the supreme court determined that he is “literate enough” as that he was able to “read” 30% of a given text. By law illiterate citizens cannot run for public posts in Brazil. Electing Tiririca shows the world Brazil’s most shameless prominent cultural aspect: Brazilians despise formal education and are proud to be ignorant; brazilians laugh in the face of those who acquire things by study and work and have no respect for law, praising corruption and what they call “o jeitinho Brasileiro” (the “Brazilian way”).

Brazil is having the same problem with catastrophic landslides that it had last year. Nothing changed. Brazil infrastructure major fail.

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